More damage against bloodied targets: (Forked Thread: Halving Hitpoints)

[Stalker0]

Forked from: Halving Hitpoints

As an odd variant - you could make it so bloodied creatures take double damage. It makes bloodied a much bigger deal and while not halving hit points marks a serious line in the sand at half.

I think this might be a great idea for people who think there combats are taking too long and I wanted to expand on it. I think doubling damage is too extreme, and the math is a bit complicated, but the idea is sound.

So we expand it to this concept:

Bloodied Strike: Once per round when making an attack against a bloodied target, a PC can choose to have that attack deal an extra 5 damage. This damage increases to 10 at paragon, and 15 at epic.


So this is basically an offshoot of the striker mechanic, but one that every player gets. We've made the math easy to make the adjustment quick, and limited it to once/round so it doesn't start jacking up with multiple attacks.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, I'm not wed to the double damage line - it was just something to throw out there quick. What it does in turn things into about 3/4 hit points and making it variables makes it more exciting around that line. The main casualty is abilities that only work when bloodied will trigger less often - partially because you'll be bloodied for half as long and partially because you'll be less _willing_ to be bloodied.

Your version still makes minions more sharply dangerous than a solo, which seems kinda odd to me, but I guess that's just incentive to not get bloodied before you take out the minions.

 

[Stalker0]

Your version still makes minions more sharply dangerous than a solo, which seems kinda odd to me, but I guess that's just incentive to not get bloodied before you take out the minions.

Keep in mind my version only works for PCs, not against them. I think doing extra damage to a bloodied Pc is not a good idea, as pcs I've noticed get bloodied very frequently, and as you say its not fair to deny pcs those bloodied powers and abilities just because of this change.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yeah, I'm not wed to the double damage line - it was just something to throw out there quick. What it does in turn things into about 3/4 hit points and making it variables makes it more exciting around that line. The main casualty is abilities that only work when bloodied will trigger less often - partially because you'll be bloodied for half as long and partially because you'll be less _willing_ to be bloodied.

Your version still makes minions more sharply dangerous than a solo, which seems kinda odd to me, but I guess that's just incentive to not get bloodied before you take out the minions.

Well, Stalker0 writes "a PC" - so it doesn't look like a monster option.

2Stalker0: Nice - you're using the vulnerability idea but remove the problem with favoring multiple attacks (=Ranger). I like it.

 

[keterys]

Fair, missed that on reread for some reason. It still limits monsters that have bloodied abilities to a certain extent, but I think it's certainly a reasonable change.

I still want to test some monsters that take double damage while bloodied on my own to see how it goes - among other things it makes it easier to put in, since it's not even a house rule, it's just some monsters working differently.

 

[keterys]

So... how much easier are monsters this way, do you think? If they count as 3/4 health effective with the doubling, they're obviously somewhere above 3/4 XP value and below full, but where is a little iffy. With the vulnerability that's a little harder to measure - for most creatures that's weaker so close the gap again.

Ie, like 80% XP and 90% XP. Still the same offensive punch, but only lasting 75% or ~85% of the time.

 

[Asmor]

Here's an idea: what if every hit vs. a bloodied creature did max damage (like a critical, but without crit bonuses like extra damage dice).

 

[greyscale1]

Asmor, mathmatically, I think thats kinda close to being the same as double damage past bloodied.

I think yours would work better, but it would also take some of the pleasure out of finishing them off if you didnt get to roll damage.

Again, like the double damage, both are a BIT too extreme.

 

[Asmor]

Asmor, mathmatically, I think thats kinda close to being the same as double damage past bloodied.

I think yours would work better, but it would also take some of the pleasure out of finishing them off if you didnt get to roll damage.

Again, like the double damage, both are a BIT too extreme.

It's actually significantly worse than half damage.

e.g.

Let's say you do 1d8+5 damage (longsword, +3 str, +2 weapon focus). That's an average of 9.5 damage. Doubled you're averaging 19 damage. Maximized, you're doing 13 damage, about a third less than doubling.

Worth noting that the benefits change depending on what proportion of the roll is static vs. based on a die roll. The more variable damage relative to static damage, the lower the decrease in damage. Regardless, though, even if you're doing 100% damage, there's still a bit less damage than simply doubling. For example, 1d6: 6 damage vs. 7. This difference increases as the number of dice increases, e.g. 6d6: 36 vs. 42.

In general, if you're rolling X dice (sizes of the dice are irrelevant) and adding Y, maximizing will result in you doing (X + Y) less than doubling.

There are two other benefits to this, though, over doubling.

1. The damage remains within "expected" ranges. Just as WotC made crits maximize damage because of the funky results that could happen when you multiply damage, this has the same effect.

2. No rolling means a bit less time spent adding stuff up. I'd imagine this saved time adds up over the course of a combat...

 

[DanmarLOK]

Hmm a few thoughts.

The +5 damage. Against a Solo with say 200 points and you're dealing an average of 20 points of damage a round, it'll reduce the number of hits required by from 10 to 9 or 10% faster.
Against a 40 hit point monster it has no effect as the average damage kills it anyway, against a 41 hit point monster it'll turn 3 hits to 2 hits or 33% faster but that's optimum. Against a 46 point monster it has no effect, it's still 3 hits.

Maxing dice like Asmor's idea has it, this appears to reward bigger dice more than smaller ones certainly. A twin strike Ranger gains significantly with this with two maxed d10's a round for example making that even more of a must have power compared to say a wizard's magic missile which is gaining 2 maxed d4's or a maxed d6 for cloud of daggers.

I'm not saying out of hand these are bad ideas just that any changes to the damage dealt increases the power and relative worth of the ones that deal the damage versus the ones that don't. More damage output on the players (or less damage mitigation by reducing hit points/ac/to hit on the monsters) means offense gains in power versus defense and runs the risk of descending into a situation similar to the one that City of Heroes had ( has still?) where a group of blasters (aka strikers) was infinitely better than a balanced group because they burned everything down before they took enough damage to need a tank (defender) or healer (leader) or controller.